


Bilberries

by myrtlebroadbelt



Series: Four Seasons [3]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Family, Gen, Hobbits, Mother-Son Relationship, Summer, The Shire, Young Bilbo Baggins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 19:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9509285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrtlebroadbelt/pseuds/myrtlebroadbelt
Summary: In which Belladonna and Bilbo go on an adventure.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the children's book _Blueberries for Sal_ by Robert McCloskey.

“Be careful,” Bungo said as they stepped onto the sun-warmed stone of the porch.

Bilbo decided that must have been his father’s favorite thing to say. He said it when Belladonna took a pan off the fire or when Bilbo stood up in the bathtub. He even said it to Holman when he trimmed the rose bushes. But he said it the most when Bilbo and Belladonna went on their adventures.

“We won’t go far,” Belladonna promised.

Bilbo hoped not. He especially hoped it wasn’t as far as Tuckborough. He’d been there lots of times, to visit Old Took and play with his cousins, and he was always terribly tired when they returned home. The world couldn’t possibly have stretched much farther than that, he imagined.

“You don’t have to go far to get into trouble,” Bungo reminded his wife.

“True,” she acknowledged, then broke into a grin. “But there are fewer opportunities along the way.”

Bungo sighed and leaned against the door frame. “Don’t be late for tea.”

Belladonna twisted the button on her husband’s waistcoat and kissed him on the nose. Then she wiggled her fingers for Bilbo to take her hand so she could help him down the front steps.

“Where are we going, Mama?” Bilbo asked as they closed the gate behind them and started down the path. It was the fifth time he’d asked since the morning.

For the fifth time, Belladonna told him, “It’s a surprise.”

Bilbo sulked. If he didn’t know a surprise was coming, that was one thing. But knowing about one and not knowing what it was — that was entirely more difficult. He didn’t think he could wait, and they’d only just left.

Seeming to read her son’s mind, Belladonna told him, “Three guesses.”

Bilbo immediately perked up, but just as quickly fretted that three wouldn’t be enough. He would have to guess very carefully.

And so he glanced up at his mother for clues. She was wearing her favorite summer dress in a crisp cream, her wide-brimmed straw hat tied under her chin with a pale blue ribbon. Her dark hair had been twisted into a loose knot at the back of her neck. Most notably, she had two wicker baskets on her arm, one large and one small.

Excited that he had discovered a clue, Bilbo blurted, “Are we having a picnic?”

“With invisible food?” Belladonna laughed, tilting the baskets to show that they were empty.

“Oh.” Bilbo frowned, feeling very foolish.

His mother scratched lightly at his top of his head. “You’re on the right path, love. Go on then, try again.”

Bilbo thought. What did empty baskets mean? They must be to carry something back home. Yes, that was it. They weren’t bringing the food; they were buying it. “The market!” he cried triumphantly.

Belladonna tsked. “I’m afraid we’re going in the wrong direction for that.”

Bilbo looked up, having been staring at the ground in concentration as his mother led the way. He turned his head, and sure enough, the market was becoming smaller and smaller with each step they took.

“Eyes forward,” Belladonna warned, tugging on his shirt sleeve and nodding hello as an elderly couple passed. “Now, one last guess.”

Bilbo furrowed his brow. He meant to get this right. He searched his surroundings for inspiration: a strangely shaped stone on the path, a bumble bee whizzing past his ear, a farmer wheeling a barrow of potatoes up ahead. None of it seemed to help.

“By the time you decide, we shall be there already,” Belladonna prompted.

That’s when he spotted a patch of daffodils stretching their stems over the lowest plank of an old fence. Ah, that must be it. He didn’t see what else it could be.

“Are we going to pick flowers?” he asked, voice bursting with hope.

Belladonna paused, and Bilbo nearly tripped over his feet with anticipation. “Hmm,” she pondered. “Quite a clever guess, that is.”

Bilbo craned his neck to study his mother’s face, but the sun was too bright overhead. He rubbed his eyes. “Did I get it right?”

“Well, that’s rather difficult to answer, I’m afraid,” Belladonna told him. “Strictly speaking, picking flowers _isn’t_ the surprise, but of course I can’t say for certain that we _won’t_ pick flowers, can I? After all, we usually do, no matter what we’re up to. Can’t keep your little fingers away from them. Then again, you did ask where we were going, and picking flowers isn’t exactly a _where_ , it’s more a of a _what_ , isn’t it? Oh, you _do_ have me stumped.”

Bilbo didn’t understand a word of what his mother was saying, and he was far too tired from thinking up guesses to even begin to ask for clarification.

“No matter,” Belladonna said with a healthy sigh, very suddenly planting her feet. “We’re here now.”

Bilbo, who had been shielding his eyes from the sun and therefore trusting the sight of his mother’s feet to guide him in the right direction, walked face-first into the brushed linen of her skirt. When he stepped back to peek around her waist, he noticed that the path, which had been dirt and stone just moments before, had faded into thick grass. He wiggled his toes in it, letting the blades tickle the skin between them. His gaze lifted, and he saw that they were standing at the base of a hill, twice as wide and tall as the one that covered Bag End, and dotted with leafy green bushes.

This seemed rather unremarkable to Bilbo, although it did cross his mind that rolling all the way down from the top might be quite fun — and he wondered if that was the purpose of their adventure after all.

“What is it, Mama?”

“Come and have a look.” She took Bilbo’s hand and led him closer to one of the bushes. He leaned in to see the round blue berries that hung like tiny Yule ornaments from the branches. He’d seen these berries before, more times than he could count (although he couldn’t count very high), but he had never seen them quite like this.

“Bilberries,” he gasped.

“That’s right,” Belladonna praised. “What do you think, shall we pick some and take them home with us?” Bilbo nodded vigorously. “And make a pie?” He nodded again. “And jam?” Again. “And scones?” Again. “And sprinkle them in porridge?”  

Bilbo’s head threatened to escape his neck and go soaring into the clouds. “Yes, please!”

“Very well,” Belladonna laughed, and handed Bilbo the smaller basket. “Shall we see who can pick the most? Oh, would you look at that! I think I’ve spotted a good one … right … here!”

With that, she reached down and lifted Bilbo into her arms. He giggled and kicked his furry feet, understanding the joke. “Bilberry” had been his mother’s favorite thing to call him from the moment he was born — not that he remembered that far back, but so she told him. There was even a time when he believed the berries had been named especially for him, and he had cried and cried to learn they had existed long before he did.

“Oh my goodness,” Belladonna groaned, hoisting him up on her hip. “This is a big one. I don’t think it will fit in the basket. Quite a pity, it looks absolutely delicious. Perfect for a pie.”

She pressed a collection of noisy kisses to the swell of his smiling cheek before setting him down again. As soon as his feet were reunited with the grass, he hurried toward the bush with his little basket held tightly in his grip and carefully, almost reverently, parted the leaves. He knew which one he wanted to pick as soon as he saw it — the perfect purply blue, and much fatter than its neighbors. He held it between his thumb and index finger with the lightest touch.

“Go on, then,” his mother encouraged over his shoulder. “You won’t hurt it.”

With his mother’s unfailing assurance granted, he tugged, sticking his tongue out in concentration, and in a blink the berry was off the stalk and resting in the hollow of his palm. His mouth watered as he recalled that brilliant tartness.

But he shouldn’t eat it yet, he thought. They were to bring the berries home with them. It would be wasteful. And anyway, they were supposed to be competing for who could pick the most. He wouldn’t want to lose that _and_ the guessing game in one day.

Just when he was beginning to think how unfair it was that his mother had a basket twice the size of his, he turned to see her hunched over a nearby bush, picking her own berry and popping it into her mouth.

“Mmm,” she said as she chewed, before glancing at him with a mischievous brow raised. “Don’t you want to try one?”

That was all the permission he needed to roll the berry over the heel of his hand and catch it on his tongue. There was a burst of sourness as soon as he bit into it, and the sensation made him dance in place. He absolutely had to have another one. Just one, and then he would put the rest in his basket.

As he quickly discovered, keeping that promise would be something of a challenge.

Just one soon turned into just two, and shortly after that, just two turned into just three, until he was eating just about every other berry he picked, with his basket looking rather pathetic as a result. Belladonna chuckled fondly from nearby as she dutifully collected enough for the both of them — although Bilbo did catch her sneaking a bite of her own here and there.

They plucked away at the branches for the better part of an hour, singing songs and thinking up various treats they would make when they returned home, from pies to pancakes to preserves, and everything in between. When Bilbo complained that the sun was too hot, Belladonna removed the very hat from her head and placed it on his own. Its band sunk down to his eyebrows, and its brim flopped over his eyes.

He could only manage to look at the bushes and his basket and the tops of his feet. But the sun was no longer in his eyes, and his poor nose was no longer burning up, and his mother’s comforting voice was close by.

That is, until it wasn’t anymore.

He had just wondered aloud precisely how many bilberries it would take to make a whole pie. As he tossed one berry into his mouth and dropped another one into his slowly growing basket, he waited for his mother’s response. But it never came.

“Mama?” he asked a bit louder, thinking perhaps she hadn’t heard him.

When there was still no answer, he shoved the hat further up on his head and held it there, glancing up the hill, down the hill, and side to side, expecting to see his mother’s curly head bobbing somewhere amidst the greenery. But it wasn’t there, and neither was the rest of her.

His first thought was that she had decided to play hide-and-seek. His second thought was that he had simply wandered too far in his picking. His third thought, which came to him in the form of a terrible weight in the pit of his stomach, was that he would never see his mother again.

He toddled to and fro in a panic, his hat slipping further and further down his forehead. He had been lost once before, in the market, having been distracted by a table of toys while his parents moved on to the vegetable carts. It was a busy day, and he was too small to see very far. When he finally found them, they told him that if they were ever separated again, to stay where he was and wait for them.

“We will always come back for you,” Belladonna had promised.

Her words returned to him now, and as much as he wanted to run in every direction at the same time, he trusted them to be true. So he plopped down on the grass and sat there, to wait.

He was so worried he couldn’t even eat any more berries. He held his little basket in his lap with his fingers wrapped tightly around the handle. Each time the hat slid down to cover his eyes, he would push it back up, expecting his mother to suddenly appear in front of him as soon as he could see again.

But she didn’t. He waited for what felt like hours, but which was more likely only a few minutes, and she never came back for him.

Just when he was about to call out her name again, he heard a sound — a rustling in the bushes not too far behind him. Convinced it was his mother, he scrambled to his feet, spilling several berries out of his basket in the process, and hurried in the direction of the sound as quickly as his feet would carry him.

“Mama!” he cried. “Mama, Mama!”

The hat slid down so far he was almost blinded, but he was too excited to adjust it. He simply kept running, believing beyond a doubt that at the end of it he would land in his mother’s arms.

Instead, he landed against something very big and very soft and very strange. The collision sent him bouncing backwards onto his back, Belladonna’s hat covering his face and leaving him in the almost dark, save for a few pale rays of sunlight peeking through the straw.

“Mama?” he asked, voice muffled, still holding onto hope despite knowing quite well at this point that it was not his mother to whom he had been running.

Hesitantly, he lifted the hat off his face and squinted up at whatever — or whoever — had stopped him. It was difficult to comprehend at first. Looming above him was what appeared to be a wall of matted brown fur. It reminded him of the toy bear that sat on his bed in Bag End, with the buttons for eyes and the tattered ear that Belladonna had sewn back on twice.

The similarity became more understandable when Bilbo noticed a fluffy stub of a tail twitch and a pair of stocky back legs shift. Bit by bit, the creature in front of him revealed itself, right down to its molasses brown eyes — which were most definitely _not_ made of buttons. Its mouth was mid-chew, with reddish-purple liquid dripping down its chops. It was berry juice, of course, but to a little hobbit it could easily be mistaken for something much more terrifying.

It should go without saying that Bilbo had never come face to face with a real bear before in his life. He had heard about them from his mother’s stories, and always imagined them to be the size of mountains. Somehow, the one looming above him at this very moment seemed even bigger.

The bear, which had twisted its head around to look at him, took a few lumbering steps to turn itself around and face him, and Bilbo found himself incapable of moving or screaming or even thinking. The animal stared him down for a moment, nostrils flaring in a sniff, before suddenly jerking its head every which way as if searching for something. If Bilbo had his wits about him, he might have said it looked worried.

When the bear turned away from him for a moment, Bilbo shook himself out of his numbness and clambered to his feet, ready to run. However, before he even had the opportunity to take his first step, the bear took off in bounding leaps — not toward him with teeth bared, as he would have expected, but away from him without even a glance backward.

Bilbo stood there blinking for half a second, before darting off in the opposite direction, his basket abandoned where he had fallen. He tore the hat from his head and held it by its ribbon, letting it flap in the air beside him as he searched behind every bush and patch of wildflowers for his mother.

It felt as if he had scoured the entire hill, top to bottom and left to right, when he finally found her. She was stooped over a bush with her back to him, still picking away and humming to herself.

What she didn’t notice was the uninvited guest tottering towards her on four paws.

It was not the same bear as before. This one was much closer in size to Bilbo’s friend at home, although still much bigger than would make any hobbit comfortable, even brave Belladonna Baggins. Bilbo stood catching his breath as the cub came closer and closer, until at last it stuck its wet snout into the basket Belladonna had filled nearly to the brim with berries.

Bilbo’s father always said Belladonna had eyes in the back of her head, but they must have been a bit cloudy, because, while she sensed someone stealing her harvest, she was rather mistaken as to the species of the thief.

“Bilbo,” she scolded gently without turning around, “I know you’re not taking my berries when you should have a full basket of your own by now.”

The cub ignored her and continued chomping away so eagerly it nearly overturned the basket.

Bilbo couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Mama!” he cried, and Belladonna’s head whipped around to look at him. Upon realizing that the creature rooting through her berries was not, in fact, her son, she dropped her gaze and immediately leapt back with a yelp at what she discovered.

The little bear started slightly at her outburst, but soon enough returned to its fruity feast.

“Bilbo, stay where you are,” Belladonna urged, moving carefully away from the cub, who paid her no mind. “He doesn’t seem dangerous, the poor dear, but his mother could be near …”

Suddenly, almost in response to Belladonna’s words, a gravelly roar erupted from further up the hill. All three of them — Bilbo, his mother, and their hungry little friend — looked up to see the large brown bear whom Bilbo had met earlier, silhouetted against the sunlit sky. Their collective gulp was almost audible.

“Oh my,” Belladonna muttered to herself, eyes wide.

Bilbo didn’t like the way this adventure was turning out. Not one bit.

Belladonna motioned for Bilbo to stay still, and he did. The cub, meanwhile, was just as obedient. After one last longing look at the basket, he scurried up the hill to reunite with his mother, and in a blink, the pair began their descent down the other side.

Once they were out of sight, Belladonna and Bilbo found their way into each other’s arms.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he mumbled into her shoulder.

“Oh, my sweet boy, _I’m_ sorry,” Belladonna told him, kneeling down to hold him close. “I heard something behind me. I thought you were there.”

When all their lucky stars had been thanked and they had squeezed each other enough to be certain of the other’s safety, they decided it was close enough to teatime for them to begin the journey home — not to mention they would rather not encounter their fellow gatherers again, polite as they were not to eat them.

So they made their way back down the hill, gathering berries here and there to replace what the little bear had pilfered. They found Bilbo’s basket where he had abandoned it, and he took a moment to collect some of the spilled contents from the grass —  to be washed later, of course. Belladonna’s hat, meanwhile, regained its rightful place on her head.

On the path home, Bilbo made sure to pick a flower, which he handed to his mother, who thanked him and offered her congratulations for winning the guessing game. Bilbo smiled, feeling very clever.

“Bilbo,” Belladonna began when they were almost to Bag End, “I know we always say you should tell the truth …”

“Yes?” Bilbo prompted.

His mother sighed. “Well, I wonder if, just this once, you might not tell your father about our little … adventure today.”

“No bilberries?” Bilbo asked, disappointed.

“Oh no, dear. Of course the berries are fine,” Belladonna half-chuckled. “I was more referring to the, er, friends we made.”

“The bears,” Bilbo said plainly.

“Yes. The bears. Just don’t mention bears. Does that sound like something you can do?”

Bilbo thought for a moment, remembering the time he and his mother had returned from a walk fifteen minutes late for dinner, only to discover Bungo at the front gate trying to convince a Shirriff to send out a search party.

Bilbo nodded. “No bears.”

“Thank you, dear. That’s very helpful.”

When they entered Bag End, Belladonna brushed a few blades of grass off her hat and placed it on the hook by the door. Bilbo followed her through the parlor, proudly holding his basket of berries in front of him with two hands.

Bungo was in the kitchen setting the table for tea. He appeared to be very impressed with their haul. “That should be enough to feed the whole West Farthing. I trust there was no trouble?”

Bilbo’s stomach did a somersault. He looked to Belladonna for an answer.

“Of course not, dear,” she assured her husband with a kiss on the nose. “What trouble could there be picking berries?” Then she turned away from him and gave Bilbo a wink.

Bungo seemed satisfied with that, distracted as he was with his son's current state of cleanliness. “Well, I see we’ve been enjoying some already,” he noted with amusement, rubbing a smear of purple from Bilbo’s cheek. “Let’s go get you cleaned up before tea, shall we?”

While his father helped him wash his face in the bathroom, Bilbo was proud of himself for not mentioning bears even once — though he desperately wanted to. He had been terribly frightened as it was happening, but time and distance had made it all seem so much more exciting, as if he had lived out the plot of one of his mother’s bedtime stories.

That’s why, when his mother was tucking him in that night, he asked for a story about bears.

“Now why would you want a story about bears?” Belladonna asked, with a note of warning in her voice that Bilbo did not recognize.

“Because of the bears we saw today,” he said, holding up his toy bear as if to remind his mother what they looked like. “Don’t you remember?”

“What’s all this about bears?” came a voice from the doorway. Bungo, passing by with a mug of chamomile, had overheard their conversation and peeked in with pointy ears perked.

Oh, dear. Bilbo felt very guilty. His father wasn’t supposed to know about the bears, and now he had gone and blabbed about it. He was just about to apologize to his mother for breaking his promise, when she interrupted him.

“Oh, yes, didn’t we tell you already?” she said to Bungo. “Bilbo and I met two very terrifying bears today. How we made it home in one piece I shall never know.”

Bungo stood there for a moment with narrowed eyes, glancing alternately between his wife and son, before suddenly breaking into a smile. It thoroughly perplexed Bilbo, who was certain he had missed something.

“Ah, I see,” Bungo said, and tapped the side of his nose as if sharing a secret. “Well, I must say, that does sound scary. I’m sure you were very brave, my boy.”

And with that he exited the room calmly sipping from his mug.

Bilbo looked at his mother with a furrowed brow. “But I thought Papa wasn’t supposed to know about the —”

“Hush, now,” she rushed to tell him. “Let’s get to that story, shall we?”

So he settled against his pillow with his bear nestled under his chin, and Belladonna proceeded to weave a thrilling tale about a young hobbit climbing a hill of thick brown grass, only to discover it wasn’t a hill at all — it was a sleeping bear.

Bilbo didn’t get to hear how it all ended, tired as he was from his day of adventure. He drifted off to sleep to the sound of his mother’s voice, her words gradually losing meaning as he went, and dreamt of bilberry pies.

**Author's Note:**

> An alternate title for this could be "Bears, Bilberries, Battlestar Galactica." 
> 
> I found a copy of _Blueberries for Sal_ while out shopping and thought it was the perfect story for Belladonna and Bilbo, so I wrote my own version — with bilberries, of course.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, and if you're interested, you can listen to a reading of _Blueberries for Sal_ [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx1eL1reOEU).


End file.
